Victorian Hearing had to apologise for an ad which described hearing aids as “ugly” along with an image in which the hearing device was replaced with a prawn, after being accused of deaf shaming.

The campaign aimed to address the issue of 20 per cent of Australians refusing to seek help for failing hearing because they are embarrassed however the campaign angered many members of the deaf community who took to social media to express their disgust with the ad.

One person said: “I don’t really love my hearing aids, but I accept that with the severity of my hearing loss, I’m stuck with them. To see them referred to as ugly though — that’s just really unhelpful.”

While Victorian Hearing stood by the ad, saying saying since the release of the campaign they had been able to “help many who would have never stepped foot inside an audiology clinic as they were not aware of all options available”, the Ad Standards Board banned the controversial campaign as it was viewed to be discriminatory and hateful towards people who need hearing aids.

Creative agency Cummins & Partners were caught out for plagiarising the work of an Adelaide-based designer Tyson Beck in its multicultural round campaign for the AFL. The agency apologised to the AFL after the sporting code conceded the campaign was too similar to Beck’s work.

Chris Jeffares, Cummins & Partners CEO, told Mumbrella the agency is “working very closely” with the AFL after the Herald Sun revealed the multicultural round campaign bore a striking similarity to a design of NBA star LeBron James created by Beck.

“As soon as we found out what happened we contacted the artist and apologised. He’s been very complimentary about the process and we’re compensating him,” Jeffares said.

Setting up an event can be costly – setting it up and then pulling it down straight away even more so. In March Coca-Cola unexpectedly pulled its Sprite Showers stunt that was expected to be held at Bondi Beach after it had already been built, citing “unforeseen circumstances” beyond its control.

The activation, which saw a giant post-mix Sprite machine set up in front of the Bondi Pavilion, had run in the past in Brazil and Israel.

Jamie Verco, the head of social at n2n Communications and Fuel Communications, angered rival advertising and marketing disciplines when he claimed the PR person “is the smartest person in the room” when it comes to collaborating with other agencies to solve a client’s problem.

“We’re the smartest people in the room. In the last decade the average ATAR [Australian Tertiary Admission Rank] score for a person that we employ would be north of 95.

“When we’re sitting in a cross-agency room we’ve got some pretty smart people that can contribute to the conversation,” he said.

Mamamia confusing American actress Eva Longoria and Sofia Vergara was quite embarrassing for the publication.

A story about Longoria having a hissy fit around a journalist’s suggestion that she doesn’t wear glasses but still endorses discount glasses chain Specsavers use of a gallery had one flaw – the Instagram posts in the gallery weren’t Longoria’s, they were Vergara’s.

Mamamia might have picked up on one or two subtle clues they’d grabbed the wrong feed, for example Vergara crouching next to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Guardian and Huffington Post both came under fire this year for asking freelance writers to write for little payment or none.

Journalist Tracey Spicer accused The Guardian of “exploitation” of freelance workers after she was asked to write a 1,000-word branded content column on women’s financial empowerment for client ANZ for $140 – 14 cents per word while Dee Madigan slammed The Huffington Post for an unsolicited approach to write for free, describing it as insulting.

Journalists love social media, particularly Twitter. But for Scott McIntyre some Tweets on Anzac Day resulted in his employer, SBS, sacking him.

Among a series of comments on the social network site McIntyre tweeted “remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan” and “Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered”.

SBS quickly disowned the comments and then promptly sacked McIntyre with SBS managing director Michael Ebeid saying McIntyre had compromised the “integrity of the network and audience trust”.

The sports reporter has enlisted the services of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers to contest the sacking, with the law firm saying the case will hinge on whether SBS overstepped its powers by axing the journalist “without a proper investigation”.

Fairfax Media were forced to withdraw a job ad for a “sales representative & journalist” in its local paper division, saying it was posted as a “combined role” by mistake.

The publisher, which has the company motto ‘independent always’, drew criticism online for the advertisement with its Australian Community Media division which appeared to cross the division between editorial and sales.

After Mumbrella contacted Fairfax the job ad was quickly taken down with a Fairfax spokesperson saying: “This position at a small weekly paper in regional NSW has been mistakenly advertised as a combined role.

“It should have been two part-time roles, one for sales, another for editorial. It is not our intention to have one person performing both functions.”

Alex Hayes worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017 in roles including editor and head of Mumbrella Bespoke.
He has been a journalist for more than a decade working on newspapers and websites in the UK and Australia, specialising in the media and marketing sector since 2012.